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Columns

I’m a journalist, and a journalist loves to follow a good story. But it’s never necessarily fun to find out there are active methamphetamine production labs in the community that you grew up in and still love.

This week the Magnet featured a cover story highlighting five individuals who were arrested by Kentucky State Police last Tuesday evening for allegedly manufacturing meth in the Ridgeview neighborhood located on the Spencer/Bullitt County line.

Have you noticed a sticky substance on the floor beneath your ficus or philodendron? Are there little scabs on the under side of the leaves of your orchid? Maybe you have noticed that your plants just look a little lack luster. Well, we can blame some plant puniness on being a tropical houseplant indoors in Kentuckiana during the winter.

Soon you’ll be receiving seed catalogs for the 2011 vegetable-growing season. While listening to the cold wind blow outside, what a comfort it is to think about spring and summer and planning your garden.

Soon you’ll be receiving seed catalogs for the 2011 vegetable-growing season. While listening to the cold wind blow outside, what a comfort it is to think about spring and summer and planning your garden.

This past week the expression “out in the cold” has really meant something.

With temperatures in the single digits and snow covering the ground, I don’t think I want to be left out in the cold. Between the wind whipping into every little crease in my clothes, the snow blowing in my face, or the slippery ice under my feet, it can be downright uncomfortable.

The slot-machine-at-the-race-track crowd is trying to run daylight by the rooster. They got a Frankfort judge to rule that slot machines with pictures of dead horses can be placed in the race tracks when slot machines with pictures of cherries, oranges and lemons cannot.

The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture is once again teaming up with the University of Tennessee to offer the sixth-annual Mid-South Stocker Conference set for Feb. 21 and 22 in Bowling Green. This year’s conference will provide cattle producers with innovative ideas.
Sponsored by the Cooperative Extension Services of the universities of Kentucky and Tennessee and each state’s Cattlemen’s Association, in partnership with Bayer Animal Health and BEEF magazine, this year’s conference will offer information relative to a changing industry.

As I write, I am comforted by the snow that has accumulated on the boughs of my Nordmann fir and Serbian spruce. It is beautiful, yes, but more important, the snow serves as an insulator against desiccating winds and frigid temperatures. We must not forget that evergreens, particularly broadleaf evergreens like rhododendrons and American hollies, lose a great deal of moisture through their leaves in the winter.

Winter desiccation is not unusual but the effects are magnified coming out of a season of drought.